What does "pure" mean?

Back in the age of Parker good wines were “ripe”, “lush”, “opulent” and had “good stuffing”.

Now good wines are “pure”. You can’t look at a critical review these days without seeing “pure” and praise of “purity”.

What does that mean? What makes a wine “pure”? The winemaker didn’t spit in it or accidentally put any non-wine substances into the vat? Does it mean anything?

It means the same as “transparent;” a synonym for “crystalline.”

Highly correlated with use of “minerality” and “nuance.”

See It’s Critic Bingo Time!

While there definitely are some positive but ill-defined terms that wine writers employ to indicate that they like a wine, without all that precisely pinpointing what it is they like about it, I take “purity” to mean a clean, direct expression of fruit that is uncluttered by overt winemaking artifacts (i.e. oak, reduction, oxidative characteristics, etc, to say nothing of brettanomyces and volatile acidity).

But John’s definition also works

I understand “pure” as fruit unmasked by oak, mlf, etc

To elaborate by giving an example, I would happily describe a Champagne from Cédric Bouchard as possessing great “purity of fruit”—no chaptalization, no oak, no reduction, no dosage, just ripe grapes. Whereas that is not a word I would reach for when writing about a more oxidative-styled or reductive-, autolytic-styled Champagne.

Don’t have any stats but probably also correlated with fine or resolved tannins, elegance, balance, no oak chips, no hot finish, moderate alcohol , a certain lightness of being without being dilute, yadda yadda.

Of course a lot depends on the next word…
In a Meiomi review,say, it’s unlikely to mean any of the above and is likely to be followed by words like rubbish.

Speaking broadly, I think it’s possible to drill down into most words you use in tasting notes and find inconsistency, ambiguity, imperfection.

I think you hope more with the totality of what you write to communicate your impression of what the wine was like and what you thought of it. Some terms really don’t make any literal sense (e.g. what do violets taste like?) but nonetheless can form one part of an overall successful communication from the writer/taster to the reader.

All sensible answers, thanks. I used to think of it as an even more vague and impressionistic synonym for “fresh” (already pretty vague). But it is becoming so ubiquitous that I have literally seen recent notes praising the purity of everything from Beaujolais to Sine Qua Non and Shafer. So what was once “hedonistic” is now “pure”, everyone seems to be getting religion!

Yes, just another example of critic bingo, but I was curious if people thought of the word with any specificity or limits to it (i.e. can there be a wine that is “good” but not “pure”). Many critic bingo words are like that though, just spraying adjectives out there.

This +1000 I often use the term “pure flavors” when describing many of the wines we drink from California these days. I most associate pure with wines that show little to no oak. Recent notes from D&R, Jolie Laide, Idlewild, Ryme etc contain pure flavors for me as they use no oak or very old barrels which have little influence over the finished wine. I find the lack of oak influence a very refreshing take on various grape varieties. For that reason I can’t say that many Ridge wines have pure flavors as there is usually heavy use of oak. By heavy I mean oak I can taste.

Also want to say that many people don’t like “pure flavors” and there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone has different flavor preferences. Some grapes show well with oak, Cabernet Sauvignon as an example but these days wines that show oak are not in my wheelhouse.

Tom

I totally know what you mean. I remember tasting a Verset Cornas blindly maybe 15 years ago and feeling that it was utterly transparent and pure – just blueberries coming through the glass.

On the other hand, it’s hard to know what “pure” means here with a blended wine made from four sites and several grapes, no doubt with a fair deal of oak (at $170 a bottle, one has to assume…). But perhaps you know this wine from covering Washington State wines and will tell us this is apt:

2016 Doubleback Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve > (Drew Bledsoe’s winery in Washington)
Vinous 95, JD 97
“The 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Reserve is 78% Cabernet Sauvignon and the balance an even split of Petit Verdot and Malbec. It’s not too dissimilar from the classic Cabernet Sauvignon yet > has a touch more purity > as well as elegance, and I suspect the large chunk of Petit Verdot is a driving factor in the differences. It offers a beautiful bouquet of crème de cassis, blueberries, crushed rocks, smoke tobacco, and violets that changes beautifully with time in the glass. > Ultra-pure> , full-bodied, and seamless on the palate, it’s a totally thrilling, satisfying Cabernet Sauvignon that will keep for 20-25 years. Bravo!”-Jeb Dunnuck

I’ve noticed the frequent use of “pure” followed by a long list of descriptors, suggesting the wine is more of a melange than purely one thing.

Along those lines:

2017 Giraud Châteauneuf-du-Pape Grenaches des Pierre
96-98 Points, Joe Czerwinski, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate:
“Full-bodied yet silky, elegant and positively delicate, the 2017 Chateauneuf du Pape Grenache de Pierre looks to be another outstanding vintage for this wine, drawn from old vines planted in the lieux-dits of La Crau and Pignan on sandy soils. Strawberry and raspberry fruit are > almost crystalline-pure > but tinged with hints of complex garrigue and dried herbs on the lacy, fine finish.” 8/18

Pure fruits but with complex garrique and dried herbs. So evidently not so pure. (Leaving aside the fact that the aroma of garrique is the aroma of dried herbs.)

+1

I would add, though not a critic, that wines I view as “pure” often have an extra layer from “clean” or “direct expression of fruit” that evokes both a direct sense of the variety and the place. i.e. while I like Thomas Pinot Noir pure is not a word I would use. However, Evesham Wood Pinot Noir often has that sense of being pure. Cleanly made, expressing both Pinot Noir and the terroir of the vineyard.

Purity as I use it means the wine shows an unadorned flavor of the grape similar to the taste you’d experience if you picked the grape off the vine and ate it on the spot.

Purity is a very good characteristic that is not often encountered.

I totally agree. I just used clean in a very positive way to describe your super terrific 2017 House block whistling. Something to the effect where nature and the winemaker are in balance, and the winemaker doesn’t ask too much from the grapes…

Sure, I taste wines all the time that are good but I would not call them ‘pure’.

And +1 on this.

I always think pure is more of a feeling the wine evokes than something that is always an exact physical property. although it does tend to some from fruit that doesn’t seem dressed up by oak or winemaking techniques. its typically something that feels bright and fresh, but mostly clean. for example: I don’t typically call a Bordeaux with that little bit of Brett in it pure, or a rhone with a bunch of animal funk, though I find both enjoyable. but a Oregon pinot that’s full of just ripe enough red raspberry and cherry flavors and not marred by excessive oak gets that description from me pretty often.

Maybe I am being naive but why don’t you try to contact the critic(s) that are using the word as part of their descriptors and ask them for their definition of “pure”.

Michael, Michael, Michael!

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

What kind of an idea is that?!

The words don’t really matter. We want the points!

I think you hope more with the totality of what you write to communicate your impression of what the wine was like and what you thought of it. Some terms really don’t make any literal sense (e.g. what do violets taste like?) but nonetheless can form one part of an overall successful communication from the writer/taster to the reader.

As usual, I agree with Chris.

Especially about the violets. After having read about violets in one too many tasting notes, one summer I got down and smelled every violet in my backyard just to see if I was missing something. We had mostly purple ones but also some white and lavender versions. They’re only about eight inches tall, so it’s not like the aromas are wafting around your nostrils unless you’re right down on the ground with them. They’re quite faint. You need to catch them in the morning before the sun burns off the oils. With roses, there are as many different scents from one variety to the next as there are different flavors in different wine grapes. Not much similarity between Riesling and Merlot. But I couldn’t distinguish as many different scents in the violets.

So I tried a few. You can eat both the flowers and the leaves. If you eat them, the flowers are slightly perfumed. Unless you eat a lot of different flowers, the best comparison most people would be familiar with is probably something very faintly like rose water, and they can have a very very slight acidic touch. But not really something you’d want in your wine, unless you like your wine to remind you of shampoo.

When you preserve them with sugar and use them to decorate your cake, they’re quite nice looking and they just taste like sugar.

My hunch, which may be dead wrong, is that most of the people who refer to them in tasting notes haven’t eaten or smelled many of them. That would make them borderline useless as precise aromatic or flavor descriptors. But I think that people refer to them to give an overall impression, rather than anything specific. Again, I may be dead wrong.

I did. Two have already posted in this thread. Just waiting for Jeb Dunnock to chime in. Here is his review of the 2014 Shafer Hillside Select:

Lastly, the flagship 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon (the only vintage where it wasn’t 100% was in 1984, when it included 9% Cabernet Franc) brought up all in high-class French oak. A textbook example of the balanced nature of the 2014 vintage, it offers a complex bouquet of crème de cassis, lead pencil shavings, tobacco leaf, and subtle minerality. Finesse-driven yet powerful on the palate, with full-bodied richness, its tannin structure is perfectly integrated into the wine, it has notable > purity > and freshness, and a great finish. It’s relatively approachable by this cuvée’s standard but has another 20-30 years of longevity ahead of it.

He seems to use it as a synonym for freshness. All the high-octane behemoths seem to be pure and fresh these days.